Wednesday, August 10, 2011

That's a wrap.

I've been asked by a few friends and family members whether or not I'm going to write a final post. You know, something to wrap up my experience. I'm hesitant to do so--I fear I'd be putting it in a box, in a time capsule. I'd make it into something with a distinct start and finish, and I'd move onto the next thing, unfazed, unaffected by it.

The truth is, it's more complicated than that. While I am not physically in Burkina Faso anymore, my mind seems to have a hard time believing what's around it. I was a groomsman in a childhood friend's wedding last weekend, and all sorts of other things are different from when I left here to join the Peace Corps, but I'm floating through it all in a dream-like state. Not interacting so much with my surroundings as trying to absorb them, make sense of them. It's a strange feeling.

I had an actual dream early this morning, before finally pulling myself out of bed. I dreamed I was back in Thyou, with my sister. We drove our crappy little white Ford Focus there. In my dream logic, I though I should return to village one last time before shipping out for good.

My sister drops me off in my village, at the big boutique. I buy something and I start biking back to my house (don't ask where the bike came from), and then I think, "Oh, no! I don't have my keys! And I've already packed up and moved all my stuff! Though...I suppose there's enough stuff in there that I left for the next volunteer to survive for a few days. However, food-wise, I'll have to eat at a neighbor's. So, I'll just have to go to the Principal's house to get my key from him."

I continue biking, but then I get lost. How did I get lost in my own village!? Well, the thing is, it was all totally different--semi-developed... There was this big cement arc-shaped entrance-way, and a big flashing screen like the ones we have at the front of banks that tell you the temperature and time. My village looked like a weird mix between a high-tech colony on Mars and...well, my village. The village of my memory.

Of course, I'm lost, so I start to worry. Then my sister pulls around the corner in the car (the cavalry to save the day!). I get in (she's somehow picked up two white girls--friends of hers?--who are sitting in the back seats, but they're irrelevant to the outcome of this dream). Then we're driving and the car is beeping because it's dangerously low on gas. So I say to go over to the gas station (my village DID have one). We come up on a stop light. (Yep.) And then there's this girl who's sort of...biking with a cart rigged up to her bike, with a water drum in it. And she can't stop fast enough, so the water drum goes flying into the gutter on the side of the road, and she soon follows.

And then I wake up.

I'm trying to figure out if this dream means anything to me. Possibly, I'll never get back to Thyou again. That I know. And if I do, it will be too far in the future to be the same as I remember it. And it will develop, however slow. But I'm in a different world now, obviously. With cars and check-engine lights and flashing signs on banks that tell you the weather. And I guess my brain is trying to wrap itself around that. Though, smartphones did not make an appearance in my dream. I still can't believe those things exist.

Yes, my service in Burkina is over. But I haven't quite gotten over it. Perhaps I never will. Certainly, the experience has become an unshakable part of me. So, maybe there are a few blog posts yet to come as I get comfortable with the new world around me.